Vaporwave is a genre of music and aesthetic that embraces the simple beauty of the 80s, utilizing deep purples, neon blues and VHS styled imagery. It has a very futuristic yet retro vibe to it which makes it appealing to both older and younger audiences.

I personally LOVE vaporwave. Although I’ve never heard that specific term until now, I’ve actually had encounters with it while browsing Youtube before attending CT 101. While watching the video Vaporwave: Genre Redefined, he mentioned Japanese vaporwave which caused someone in my brain to tick and I searched up “Japanese Vaporwave” on Youtube.

What I found out was I’ve been listening to vaporwave this whole time! The video above includes a song originally by Anri, a japanese artist in the 80s, that has been remixed to fit the vaporwave genre. It’s accompanied by a clip from a Japanese animation shown during the 90s. It’s one of my favorite songs to listen to when I need a break from work or school.

Although I wouldn’t personally create vaporwave designs, I think they’re very intriguing! The art style itself SHOULD be considered old fashioned, but it’s actually very refreshing and soothing! Also, now that I’ve realized my love for vaporwave music, I’ll continue searching for more songs to jam out to!

Vaporwave…how much nostalgia it brings!

When reviewing the Vaporwave content I was beyond amazed at how appealing it is to the eyes. I have definitely seen it before but never knew that it was called Vapor Wave. I love how it has the aesthetic of the ’80s and how it is a mixture of images, videos, memories people love, and other elements. I love the aesthetic feel it has. I personally love those aesthetic wallpapers for background and always go on Pinterest for some. Now I’m thinking of having some Vaporwave wallpaper for my phone soon. As much as I like the looks and vibes of Vaporwave, I feel like it’s not for me to create but to observe and love. While observing different Vaporwave I went to the Net-Art site where there was a specific Vapor Wave Aesthetic gallery. It’s filled with various works of others who created Vaporwave art. All looked amazing and I couldn’t pick a favorite so I screenshot the page with multiple works 🙂

I really enjoyed going through my classmates’ websites. I felt like I personally was having writer’s block. As much as I enjoy reading and writing random stuff, I was not in the mood to do so. However, something else that helped me tremendously, was looking through the websites of my classmate’s and oh boy did those motivate me. Like I came upon Claudia Campos’ website and right away started craving cakes and pie.
I also looked through Louannie Smith’s website and I related so much. These made me start wanting to write and see others websites. These are just two of my classmates’ sites but I’m sure everyone else has great ones too.

Registering my domain was an actual breeze, I was somewhat afraid that my domain was not gonna be available but either way I was prepared for such scenario, thankfully though I did not have to go to my backup domain names because my first domain name I typed was indeed available. The process was simple, and watching the zoom meeting again was very helpful!

You gotta love it when things go well from the start!

From there I moved to the next page which I inserted promo code and added the rest of information needed to proceed and moved forth to wordpress which was easy to install!

The installation was successful and easy and thankfully with the provided zoom recording I was able to explore the following steps of where to go and what to do. I also made sure that I did the email confirmation because I usually forget as we lol.

My next step is to build my website, I have made some templates in another site I use to make things easier for me to build my website at a comfortable speed. As is, I am very glad the process of this whole things was simple and smooth, it didn’t make me stress with issues and I’m happy to finally be starting this site.

For this assignment, we have to explore another classmate’s website and that is a great idea because it will give the reason to visit another website and appreciate their work. I visit Jasmin Payne’s website, her website is about the artwork. I saw some of her art, I must say she is very talented. The introduction to the website is pretty straightforward and the header image of the website is her own sketch which is very cool!

I remember when I use to make some of my YouTube videos, I kind of still do once in a while. Not great content but I try. I don’t have the equipment’s for it yet but that does not stop me. I use to post regularly but stopped. I lost motivation to upload. But back to the topic. When I use to make videos I once uploaded a video with some music in it. I thought it was free to use for some reason. I guess I got confused. I ended up getting a little notice from YouTube and I got scared, I am not going to lie lol. But nothing to bad. The music I was using was copyrighted I guess so they gave me a warning. I ended up taking down the video. I’m not sure if I reuploaded it with no music or just deleted it.

So getting an idea of how to avoid copyright strikes and knowing the basics and learning so your videos don’t get taken down or a strike helps.

One quote that I got from Larry Lessig was when he stated “The tools of creativity have become tools of speech” I find this compelling because in this generation people get so creative. People with the access to a PC has the ability to create videos to songs by just using images that matches the words from the song. Just like gifs. We create gifs and through Gifs you can express you feelings just using that image or part of a video. It becomes a way of communication to some people.

Just like this Gif right here. you can use that and send it to someone and the person could most likely tell your excited about the news or what they said. It’s amazing what we can do with videos and images with the technology we have today.

Why is there copyright?↓↓

I feel like there is copyright because it helps protect others work. “Copyright law protects literary, musical, graphic, or other artistic forms in which an author expresses intellectual concepts” according to mateoaboy.com

When you share, re-share, and remix content on the web you should let the people know who the content you are using belongs to. That way you avoid the copyright strike.

Before reviewing this post, I was aware of the vaporware aesthetic but I was never aware of the assigned name- which is quite cool if you ask me.

In doing research on it, I found out that Vaporwave is “defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s.”

These are a few of the vaporwave images posted by the professor and examining them from a journalistic perspective, I think they are quite unique and very artistic. This type of art appears to be both objective and subjective.

For example: look at the first image I copied. Every entity in the image is clear in its individuality- there is a cell phone, a computer, some palm trees, as well as some “museum heads”. We can all understand what those things mean separately (which makes it objective) but what do those things mean once they are put together? What feelings stir up in you when you look at that combination?

For me, the combination of the pictures and the use of colors make me feel as though I’m on a hot island in one of those huge mansions you would see in the movies. ( The ones mostly owned by drug kartels.) I’m not sure why but that’s what I get from looking at the image.

Typical vaporware images actually remind me of the 80’s game ‘Tron.’ I’ve never played the game but I remember seeing the game in the infamous “Wreck-it-Ralph” and I thought the aesthetic of the game was very cool.

Though I was looking at this from a journalistic perspective, I wanted to try making my own vaporware image- but that didn’t quite work out. I guess I need some more practice but I genuinely admire the entire aspect of vaporwave.

After about 3 hours messing around with photopea and bouncing the picture from my computer to my phone.

Here is  my VaporWave image I created

Now I am not going to lie this was really difficult to make but I loved every second of the process. I think the hardest part was knowing when it was complete and feeling satisfied with the results.

You see when I started thinking about what I wanted my image to look like I realized that the Vaporwave and the Cyberpunk theme are really similar. So I thought why don’t I combine the two?

This is a CyberPunk Theme image. In other word think of BladeRunner.

This is a Vapor Wave image.

The similarities are striking. They’re pretty easy too confused because cyberpunk did develop in the 80s with all the futuristic movies and all.

The best way I can distinguish them is Vapor wave does more of a mash up of thing  culturally relevant to the 80s and 90s and Cyberpunk is more of a  dystopian depiction  of what the future is going look like.

However, both use the same color schemes and the images produced are a social commentary of consumerism. How things are portray to the bright and cool but there is always a darker mean behind it.

It’s two sides of the same coin if you ask me. Either ways it’s cool and they are fun to make. I can honestly say that I am hooked to this theme and iI’m looking forwards to making more of these in the future.

In exploring my classmate’s site, I stumbled upon that of Saul DeLeon’s. The first thing that caught my eye was the site’s domain name- ‘The Phantom Chronicle.’ It appears as though Saul is trying to create his own form of a news outlet, which is very impressive.

I think the image used for the home screen of the website is impeccable. The aesthetic gives the impression that it is an actual newspaper.

I like the variety of the blog posts on his site. One post is about a trendy movie, and the other is more of a news article, so I appreciate the fact that the site appeals to more than one audience.

Trendy movie blog post.

Article-like blog post.

I don’t want to give away much but I guarantee both posts are worth the read.

The graphics on the site are also very appealing. They are perfectly placed and are inviting without distracting the viewer from the blog posts.

Overall, I love the site and I am looking forward to its growth.

Today we were asked to explore another classmate’s website to explore what their website was about. But before I explore someone else’s site let’s explore mine. My site is about the empowerment of women and self belonging. Often time many of us get so caught up with social media and how we are perceived on social media causing us to lose our true identity.

www.deandrajohns.com CHECK US OUT

I choose https://straighttalkwithkysa.com/blog/ I because her site is a complete judgment-free zoom which is great. Many times blogs are drama-filled and its sole purpose is to bring one down instead of uplifting them in a time of need. Her blog is extremely easy the navigate and gets straight to the point. It is extremely important to ensure the stay of children on the internet especially during a time during the pandemic in which most students have moved t remote learning. Having a blog like this is imperative. It was a cool add on to include additional links for further information. Keep up the great work.

Today we are going to explore one of my fellow classmates website. I’m currently still trying to get used to creating my website. I’m changing the backgrounds and everything and adding more details to my website.

I can’t wait to see what some people have came up with and ideas that they have.

https://vibewithcindy.com/

The link above is the link of the website I went and explored. I want to start by saying it looks very nice. I like the design and layout of the website. Everything is so well put together. It’s a vibe. I really like and can’t wait to see the finished website. I really like were you are going with this.